Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer on the Newsdesk, in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor for online coverage of several Olympic Games, from London 2012 to Pyeongchang 2018. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In the past, Chappell has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, NPR.org won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR, Chappell was part of the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage on major events.

Chappell's work for CNN included editing digital video and producing web stories for SI.com. He also edited and produced stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, Chappell attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

China's military will hold live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait next week, putting new focus on raised tensions between the U.S. and China. The announcement follows Chinese President Xi Jinping's review of his country's largest-ever navy parade.

Facing a potential death penalty over a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and standing to receive $25,000 from his mother's life insurance policy — and possibly much more than that from her estate — Nikolas Cruz wants the money to go to a group named by the victims, his attorneys say.

That news emerged from a recent court hearing about Cruz's finances, which included the question of whether the 19-year-old can afford to hire a lawyer. Cruz has confessed to killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.

A military transport aircraft crashed near Algeria's Boufarik Air Base on Wednesday morning, killing at least 257 people, according to Algeria's defense ministry. The plane came down in an open farm field near the base, the ministry says.

The military says it's not yet sure what caused the crash near its large military airport in northern Algeria, a country in North Africa. An investigation has been ordered.

Facebook users have begun to see whether they're among the 87 million people whose information may have been compromised for use by a political research firm. For some, the news is good: "It doesn't appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica."

Employers can't pay women less than men just because they made less at a previous job, a federal appeals court has ruled. The continuing gender pay gap is "an embarrassing reality of our economy," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its opinion.

The court said a woman's prior salary, whether considered on its own or along with other factors, can't be used to justify paying a female employee less than her male counterpart. To do so perpetuates discrimination, the court's majority opinion said.

Belgian cyclist Michael Goolaerts has died after crashing during Sunday's Paris-Roubaix race, a notoriously difficult contest that's nicknamed "The Hell of the North." Goolaerts, 23, died of cardiac arrest, his team said.

Goolaerts was about 93 miles from the finish in the one-day, 257-km (160-mile) race when he crashed into an embankment on a sharp right-hand turn. Video replays showed that he seemed to be the only cyclist in his group who crashed. Medical personnel attended to Goolaerts, and he was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Lille.

Recent models of Ford's F-150 pickup and Expedition SUV are included in a new recall from the Ford Motor Co., which says gear shift problems could lead drivers to think their vehicle is in park, even if that's not the case — and that "unintended vehicle movement" could occur.

The recall covers some 350,000 vehicles made for the 2018 model year that have 10-speed and 6-speed automatic transmissions.

Ford says it is "aware of one reported accident and injury related to this condition."

The Trump administration is laying sanctions on 38 Russian oligarchs, government officials and business entities, citing "the Kremlin's malign agenda" that ranges from malicious online campaigns and efforts to undermine democracy to its actions in eastern Ukraine and Syria.

Seven Russian oligarchs and the 12 companies they own or control are on the new sanctions list. So are 17 senior Russian government officials, along with a government -owned weapons trading company and its subsidiary bank.

The Kremlin is crying foul on Facebook, accusing the social media giant of censorship after it took down more than 200 pages and accounts that were run by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency — the "troll factory" that is under indictment for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

Sixty American diplomats are leaving Russia on Thursday, meeting a deadline set when the Kremlin expelled them in retaliation for the U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats. The tit-for-tat exchange is part of an international row over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England.

"Three large buses and a minivan departed from the back gate of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow early Thursday morning," Charles Maynes reports for NPR's Newscast unit, "carrying American diplomats, their families, and the occasional family pet."

Citing salmonella concerns, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a mandatory recall for kratom products made by a Las Vegas company — and the federal agency says it's the first time it has ever taken such an action after a company ignored a federal request for a voluntary recall.

China's leaders followed President Trump in taking another step toward a new trade war, announcing a plan to put steep tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. imports. China's proposed 25 percent tariffs would target a wide range of American products, from soybeans and whiskey to airplanes and cars.

"China currently buys about $14 billion worth of American soybeans each year — almost a third of the entire U.S. crop," NPR's Dan Charles reports for our Newscast unit. "Prices for U.S. soybeans tumbled by 3 to 5 percent" on the news, Dan adds.

In a much-watched case, a Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan to boost the amount of water it takes from the state. The request attracted a record number of public comments — with 80,945 against and 75 in favor.

It started with a warning email last summer, from a security researcher who told Panera Bread that its website was exposing sensitive customer data. But after the problem went unfixed for months, the researcher went public with proof of the flaw. Another analyst said Panera's response was "half-baked."

ISIS says it was behind a terrorist attack on a Christian family in Quetta, Pakistan, that killed four people one day after Easter Sunday. The relatives had been riding in a rickshaw when motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire on them.

Three men and a woman died in the attack. A fifth person riding in the rickshaw — a 12-year-old girl — survived and was taken to the hospital, Pakistan's Dawn news agency says.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray Caso is rejecting claims that his country allows "caravans" of migrants to pass into the U.S. — something President Trump accused Mexico of doing in a tweet this weekend. Defending Mexico, Videgaray added, "Facts clearly reflect this."

Videgaray's response came hours after Trump pointedly criticized Mexico on Sunday morning. The U.S. president devoted a series of tweets warning of "caravans" of people heading to the U.S. and he threatened to hurt Mexico economically and to build a wall along the border.

The suspected serial bomber who died north of Austin, Texas, on Wednesday morning was Mark Anthony Conditt, a 23-year-old who grew up in the area, public records show. Conditt died from an explosion that police say he triggered when a SWAT team was closing in on him.

The death of Nikolai Glushkov, the 68-year-old Russian businessman whose body was found in his London home on Monday, is being investigated as a murder. The cause of death was "compression to the neck," police say.

ProPublica is retracting parts of its story that linked Gina Haspel, President Trump's choice to lead the CIA, with the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida leader who was held at a secret "black site" prison in Thailand in 2002. The investigative newsroom cited new clarifications from CIA insiders as the reason for its correction. It also issued an apology.

From ProPublica:

"We at ProPublica hold government officials responsible for their missteps, and we must be equally accountable.

After one year in his job, national security adviser H.R. McMaster is expected to depart his White House position soon, U.S. officials tell NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Despite a denial from the Trump administration, the only thing that is reportedly holding up McMaster's departure is a transition plan.

McMaster's exit has been the subject of rumors, in a similar way that outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had been viewed as not long for life under President Trump. Officials say McMaster, 55, could leave within weeks, possibly within a month or so.

Russia says it will retaliate against Britain's recently announced sanctions, saying that President Vladimir Putin will soon decide the best way to respond to the U.K.'s expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats. It's the latest escalation in the clash between the two nations over the use of a military-grade nerve agent against a former Russian spy who is now a British citizen.

A family that flew on United Airlines Monday night is mourning their dog, after the pet died in an overhead bin — an arrangement that a flight attendant had reportedly insisted upon. United says it was "a tragic accident" and that it is investigating.

The U.K. is expelling 23 Russian diplomats as punishment for a chemical weapons attack that took place in England. Prime Minister Theresa May has said Russia was likely behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy who, along with his daughter, was exposed to a lethal nerve agent that was developed in Russia.

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had."

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Tuesday that Russia has "until midnight tonight" to explain how a lethal Novichok nerve agent that was developed in Russia came to be used on U.K. soil. Johnson said Britain is preparing to take "commensurate but robust" action.

James Schwab has resigned from his job as a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, saying he didn't agree with Trump administration officials' use of "misleading facts" to attack Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf after the mayor issued a warning about an immigration sweep in late February.